IN BRIEF: LBJ Debate Society hosts British National Team

Posted by Jayme Blaschke
University News Service
October 2, 2014

The Department of Communication Studies and the LBJ Debate Society will host the British National Debate team Oct. 7 in a public debate on the Common Experience theme "Democracy’s Promise: From Segregation to Integration." 

The debate will be 7 p.m. in the Recital Hall of the Performing Arts Center. The event is free and open to the public.

The British Tour is the oldest and arguably the most prestigious university debating tour. The annual U.K.-U.S. exchange has been in existence since 1922. Alumni of the tour include a former British prime minister, a leader of the opposition and an Archbishop of Canterbury as well as many senior politicians, journalists and business people.

This year’s British team is made up of Kate Brooks and Alice Coombes Huntley. 

Brooks is a postgraduate student reading for the DPhil in International Relations at the University of Oxford. In her work she examines the historical evolution of conceptions of territory in international theory and practice. She also works as a consultant researcher for the United Nations Economic and Social Commission for Western Asia. Brooks is head of competitive debating at the Oxford Union and a successful competitive debater, having won of the Oxford Women's Open 2013 and the Moscow Open 2012, and having reached the finals of Glasgow Ancients 2014, Glasgow Women's 2014, KCL IV 2013 and the Aberdeen Open 2014. She will be representing Oxford at the European Universities Debating Championships 2014 in Zagreb.

Huntley is a recent graduate of the University of Bristol with a first-class degree in English Literature. She has been involved with the English-Speaking Union since she was a teenager, first as a member of the England World Schools team and now as a mentor and England team committee member. As a debater, she has won three national competitions, reached the finals of countless others and has been in elimination rounds at the World Schools, World Universities and European Universities Championships. Her team was ranked fourth in Europe in 2013. She has also judged at many school and university competitions, most notably as co-chief adjudicator of the ESU John Smith Memorial Mace, commonly known as the English National Championships.

The tour is sponsored by the English Speaking Union and the NCA Committee for International Discussion and Debate.

For more information contact Wayne Kraemer, director of forensics at Texas State, at wk02@txstate.edu